 On
Monday morning, as news broke about the Virginia Tech
shootings, I was on a small, rural college campus in
Idaho--the kind of place, like Blacksburg, where you feel
safe; you feel insulated from the violence in the rest of
the world. As the enormity of the tragedy started to become
clear that day, I met more and more people on campus who
surprised me with their reaction because it was the same one
that I had and I thought I was alone. They were sad, but
they weren't crying. They were heartbroken, but they
weren't shocked.
Why? What's happened to us?
The Real Story tonight is that America has changed.
Sometimes it takes a tragedy to see it, but our innocence is
gone. Not too long ago, this country thought it was
different than the rest of the world. Then, one April
morning, two Americans killed 168 people in Oklahoma City
and made us realize we're not.
We thought our schools were safe--and then, on another April
morning, Columbine showed us otherwise.
We thought our cities were safe--until the images of
buildings collapsing and huge clouds of dust spilling
through the streets on 9/11 proved us wrong again.
We thought, well, you can just get away from the cities,
unplug from it all and you'll be safe. And then five young
Amish girls were massacred in their schoolroom.
The human connection to these tragedies is still there--I
feel for the families, after all I'm human and I'm a Dad. I
even understand the brutality and enormity of it all--but
the difference now is that they don't shock me anymore. Did
you honestly have the same emotions on Monday that you did
after Columbine? I didn't.
We've become more hardened; more callous, and part of that
is because of the way the media feasts on these stories. I'm
in cable news, so call me hypocrite if you want, but I see
what happens from the inside--you have to keep feeding the
beast. One week there's a media frenzy over the father of
Anna Nicole's baby; the next week we're feasting on Don
Imus; and now it's Virginia Tech. It's all about the bigger
story, the sexier story, the story that will rate the best
because it makes you cry or scream with horror.
The media--and unfortunately I include myself in
that--doesn't always care about the people in these
tragedies; they just want to make you care about them,
because then you'll watch. Less than 24 hours after the
killings, the media was interviewing fathers and brothers of
the victims; people who were clearly still in shock. Does
the public really need to see these people or is it just
exploiting a tragedy?
We are no longer the people who watched Columbine in horror
because we've already seen SWAT teams at a school and kids
jumping out of windows to survive. What scares me now is
what we haven't seen. What kind of tragedy has to happen to
get us past the numbness? What will it take to reconnect
with those raw emotions we've lost? I don't know, but I
fear that, like it or not, we're going to find out.
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Show Transcript
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